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A professor at the University of Virginia and president of Ohio University, William McGuffey began one of the nation’s first teachers’ associations.

In the foreword of McGuffey’s Reader, 1836, he wrote, “The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our prevalent notions of the character of God, the great moral governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions.”

While most nations trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our nation were laid by civilized men, by Christians…

The memory of our fathers should be the watchword of liberty throughout the land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we fear, behold their like again.

Such models of moral excellence, such apostles of civil and religious liberty…To ridicule them is national suicide.

McGuffey’s Eclectic First Reader included the lesson “Evening Prayer”:

At the close of the day, before you go to sleep, you should not fail to pray to God to keep you from sin and from harm…You should thank him for all his good gifts; and learn, while young, to put your trust in Him; and the kind care of God will be with you.

In McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader, 1879, is a lesson by William Ellery Channing titled “Religion — The Only Basis of Society”:

How powerless conscience would become without the belief of a God…

Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man.

Appetite, knowing no restraint…would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws…Man would become…what the theory of atheism declares him to be – a companion for brutes.